Racing scion Ryan Walkinshaw has revealed his ambition to reprise his famous father’s success in the 24 Hours of Le Mans endurance classic.
The late Tom Walkinshaw engineered famous Jaguar victories at Le Mans at the height of the Group C sports car era in 1988 and 1990.
Ryan Walkinshaw is aiming to re-establish his family’s legacy at Le Mans in league with Andretti Global and Uniteed Autosports, co-owners of his Walkinshaw Andretti United Supercars team.
“My ambition has always been to go back to Le Mans,” he told the Speedcafe Newscast podcast.
“That’s something I’d really like to compete in and I think it’d be quite a special story if we had some success there considering my father’s success at Le Mans.
“I just think that entire event and WEC [FIA World Endurance Championship sportscars] is a really, really exciting category – and Hypercar is only going to make it bigger.
“The ease of entry and the financial cost of entry is a lot less than it used to be back when you just had Porsche and Audi playing in that LMP1 game.”
Walkinshaw has canvassed his Le Mans ambition with Michael Andretti and McLaren F1 boss Zak Brown, co-owner of United Autosports, but admits it’s been on hold while WAU aims at regaining a Supercars title.
“We’ve spoken in the past with them about doing some programmes with them in LMP2 or LMP3, but we’ve been so focused on Supercars and trying to win championships here,” the 36-year-old Monaco-based entrepreneur said. “That’s been a big distraction and we’re probably not ready for that yet.
“But I would hope that before I get too old to go racing, which hopefully is a long time from now, that we’ll be able to compete in something like Le Mans in the future.”
Ultimately, Walkinshaw wants to try to emulate his father’s Le Mans success with an outright victory in the far future.
“You always want to go and win,” he said.
“Obviously, the plan on how you get there hasn’t been even remotely worked on yet. But we already have a good partnership with United Autosports, who are already competing at Le Mans and have been very successful there. So anything we do initially would be would be something of a partnership with them, I suspect.”
He added: “The dream would be to go there and run a Hypercar programme eventually. But you’d want to go in and learn in some of the categories below and build your team up in that way, and then eventually when you’re ready, take those steps up.
“We’ll walk before we run.”
Tom Walkinshaw’s success at Le Mans with Jaguar, recapturing the British marque’s 1950s racing glory, catapulted his TWR operation to a force in global racing and automotive engineering, including Australia with Holden Special Vehicles and Holden Racing Team.
TWR-run HRT dominated Supercars in the late 1990s and early 2000s, slumping after the Britain-based group collapsed in early 2003.
Only HSV survived, staying in the Walkinshaw family’s hands, while Tom regained control of HRT before his death in late 2010.
Ryan Walkinshaw took over his family’s Australian operations at 23 and despite initial scepticism, under his guidance the road car arm has prospered post-Holden and the Clayton-based race team has recovered from losing its HRT imprimatur.
WAU defected to Ford this year, with spearhead Chaz Mostert the best placed Mustang driver in the championship in fifth.
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